Tuesday Bible Reading and Devotional

Read 1 Kings 18:19-24, 36-39

What stuck out to you in reading these verses today?

Did the verses raise any questions as you read?

What is God leading you to know or do from these verses?

Elijah was truly a prophet of power, as the angel said to Zechariah (Luke 1:17). Elijah’s power was the power of God, in stark contrast to lack of power of the prophets of Baal. Elijah’s desire in this contest is told to us in verse 37: Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.

The same phrase pops up in the closing verse of the Old Testament, And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction (Malachi 4:6). Malachi is anticipating a prophet who will come to turn the people and their families back to a loyalty of faith towards God.

This is exactly what the angel says to Zechariah in the temple in Luke 1:17: and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.John the Baptist was like Elijah, preparing the way for the greatest prophet, Jesus, the Son of God. Elijah was used by God to not only turn his people back to God, but to point forward to the one who could turn all his people back to God.